Are Big Businesses Lobbying to Keep Marijuana Illegal?

Mother Jones Magazine published last year an article detailing “Capitol Hill’s Top 75 Corporate Sponsors” based on their campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures in Washington DC from 1989-2010. I thought it might be interesting to review the list with an eye toward which ones could be pushing Washington hardest to hold the line on marijuana prohibition vs. which ones seek its end.

Switchgrass. Algae. Corn Ethanol. Natural Gas. “Clean” Coal. Everybody recognizes the need for alternative fuels to end our reliance on oil. It seems inconceivable that these companies would resist development of hempseed oil, the original fuel for the original diesel engine, but if they’ve already invested in other alternative fuel sources, why legalize hemp and create competitors or a need to re-direct investments?

Besides, they still have plenty of oil left to sell, and in products you never think of. Your plastic goods. Pesticides and fertilizers for your food. Building materials. Plus a few dozen other products whose manufacturers wouldn’t need to buy petroleum if they had cheaper sustainable hempseed oil to replace it with.

Second only to oil in the “who knew it was in so much stuff?” category is corn. High fructose corn syrup accounts for about half of all sugars in the American diet. It’s in your ketchup, for Pete’s sake! There’s also a symbiotic relationship between the food industry producing ethanol for Big Energy and the returned favor of producing pesticides and herbicides for Big Agribusiness. A flourishing hemp industry would produce hempseed oil for energy and the remaining hempseed becmes nutritious protein for people and livestock. Even the remaining farmers of other crops would use less fertilizers as farmers use hemp as a rotational crop and revitalizes the soil naturally.